Traveling by train to American style towns in the 1930s, Shanghai's immersive theater has released another hit performance | actor | hit

A heart wrenching bank robbery, a magical duel between wizards of different schools... This suspenseful event takes place in the small town of Providence and is currently being staged in a theater along the riverbank in Xuhui, Shanghai.

Immersive drama? Escape from the Chamber of Secrets? Or is it a carefully planned murder mystery? Its name is Providence Town.

The audience enters the town under the guidance of the character actors, becoming witnesses, observers, participants, puzzle solvers, and promoters of a series of events. Finally, unravel the mystery one by one.

In February 2023, the town of Providen, covering an area of 3000 square meters and integrating various physical landscapes and sound and optical design, welcomed their first batch of "foreign residents" to visit. In the following six months, over 200 batches of outsiders became temporary residents of the town. In the first week of its premiere, "Providence Town" rose to fame at the box office and quickly took the top spot in the immersive cat eye experience. The original ticket price of 528 yuan did not prevent more people from coming to watch enthusiastically.

How was this small town built? What kind of charm does it have that attracts people to visit repeatedly?

1、 Screenwriter: Not a programmer, unable to write this book

Before creating Providence, Wang Xiaohe was a well-known screenwriter in the domestic film and television industry. He participated in the creation of the first and second scripts of "Detective Chinatown" and also served as a screenwriter for the self-made variety show "Inference Creed" on Bilibili.

From his youth, he became obsessed with detective stories, and his works were always related to mystery solving; The background in computer science and the career experience of a programmer give him a self proclaimed "precision like mechanical logic and deduction ability unique to science students.".

"Providence Town" originated from Wang Xiaohe's wild imagination when he was bored at home. Inspired by it, he spent several hours carefully conceptualizing a complete worldview: a small American town from the 1930s.

"That was an era of alternation between old and new, with contradictions and vitality coexisting. Magic and technological progress complemented each other, prohibition laws caused gangs to run rampant, and immigrants of different races created diverse demands for value and actual conflicts of interest. These elements can easily be accommodated within this framework," said Wang Xiaohe.

A sufficiently open worldview framework provides support for the unfolding of the narrative. He and his screenwriter partner Hewu began creating storylines on the game's sandbox like town map: the seven main storylines were independent of each other, sometimes intertwined, and due to the different choices of characters and audience participation, more than 1000 side storylines were derived.

Wang Xiaohe knew that this was something that no one had done before.

Before Providence, he had always been an audience for immersive theater, a scriptwriter, and a player of escape rooms. He enjoyed these experiences and often found inspiration in them. At the same time, he felt that he had never encountered a product that truly satisfied him: "Most of the products on the market lack openness, and some immersive spaces have relatively rough scenery and a single plot, making it difficult for audiences to repeatedly enter, experiencing different results and possibilities."

Wang Xiaohe knows that the real challenge in achieving the level of openness and richness of sandbox games is not how to write a character biography in a rich and three-dimensional way, but to use the thinking and tools of science students to seamlessly connect the progress of various storylines in a limited time and space environment, in a nearly natural development state.

So, the script for "Providence Town" starts with a bunch of dazzling tables and Gantt charts.

On the chart, the progress time points of different plot clues are clearly marked, and the specific content cannot be seen on the abstract lines. However, different plot lines can be seen to sometimes connect, sometimes move away, and sometimes move forward in a close but parallel state.

This is the source code for all the stories, ensuring that the various events that occur in the small town can generate order as Wang Xiaohe hoped, without conflicting with each other. However, at the same time, these frameworks are deeply embedded in exquisite scenery, rich character settings, various sudden and improvised performances, and branching storylines, bringing a high degree of openness to the audience. Only the occasional ringing of bells in the small town becomes a signal to remind actors to timely advance the main storyline.

"In fact, in my imagination, every storyline in the small town was played on the go, and the audience could choose to join together or participate in different storylines. All storylines were completely open, without the concept of 'one scene'. However, the current ticketing system was not yet able to cooperate with such personalized customization. On the other hand, considering the operability of timely project implementation, the director arranged a structure where the audience started and ended together. In fact, this is also good. The Easter egg performances at the end of the entire scene can gather popularity at the end, and the audience's feedback is also good." Wang Xiaohe said.

Director 2.: I was confused at first. How should the play be arranged?

Wu Mengda, director of Providen Town, was born in 2000 and was admitted to the director department of Shanghai Theatre Academy in 2018. During the school, he and his classmates received the same orthodox, serious and standardized academic performance system training.

Five years later, Wu Mengda, who had not yet graduated for a year, became the leader of this team of dozens of actors. Before each performance began, he transformed into a busy "shadow" shuttling around in front of and behind the scenes, taking care of every aspect of the town from prop placement to actor placement; During the visit, he would hide at an inconspicuous corner of every public event, observing the performances of the actors and the reactions of the audience, and quietly taking notes.

Wu Mengda is always dressed in black, quietly busy in front of the stage and behind the scenes.

This young man was once a skilled performer on the "framed stage". During his school years, he participated in many large-scale stage play projects. What impressed him the most was his work as a digital media interaction designer in the revolutionary themed immersive play "Code 1912" at the Yuhuatai Theater in Nanjing. That experience exposed him for the first time to new stage expression media and immersive performance forms.

So, when the opportunity to "build a small town" was presented to him, he readily agreed without hesitation.

"No one has done it before, how fun it is!"

When he finally received the script, Wu Mengda was still in a daze. The first sentence he said to screenwriter Wang Xiaohe was, "How do we arrange this?!"

It's not that the graphic language of a science student screenwriter is unclear, but he didn't expect the multi-threaded plot to be so complex when squeezed into a limited time and space environment.

Putting aside his experience of studying traditional scripts, he gradually sorted out the sequence of the main storyline and examined everything that happened in the town's various spaces within two and a half hours from a divine perspective.

Wu Mengda led the actors to gradually integrate their lines and actions into the performance based on the character biographies provided by the screenwriter. As an open world of storylines, actors and audiences are at zero distance, which requires directors to not only help actors establish a solid sense of character beliefs, but also focus on training their adaptability during the creative process.

In order for actors to smoothly enter their roles, Wu Mengda is always thinking of ways. The overseas Chinese leader in Chinatown, Aunt Wang, is a strong woman with long sleeves and a Shanghai accent in her speech; And another version of this character has recently been decided to be played by actors who previously played other roles, which is an "old man" with a Northeastern speaking style.

Wu Mengda designs actors who enter new roles as Wang Yi's companions, appearing in every performance. Actors can adapt to the environment with relatively lightweight performances while also observing and learning from their peers up close, familiarizing themselves with how the plot can continue to develop under the impetus of the actors.

Later on, this little trick became the basic operation for every new actor entering the internship stage.

"Everyone enters the roles very quickly, and most actors' lead time is around three weeks. This team is very young but has strong professional skills, which makes me very proud," said Wu Mengda.

For Wu Mengda, breaking the traditional framed stage is the most satisfying thing to do.

"The 'Sleepless Night', which everyone is familiar with, I think the 'fourth wall' between the actors and the audience has not been completely broken. The audience follows closely and it is difficult to truly participate in it. For most viewers in our small town, the gameplay is very diverse. The first time, many people cannot find direction and are pushed forward by the characters and plot; the second time, they can already fully interact with the characters and participate in the plot; if there are still three or four strokes, different card strategies, different plot branches, and collection elements, all can bring enough freshness to the old audience." Wu Mengda said.

Open gameplay also has hidden concerns. Some people have likened Providence to the American drama "The West", but Wu Mengda firmly opposes this.

"The characters in the small town of 'World of the West' are all robots, and the main goal is to let tourists vent their frustrations. They can do anything they cannot or dare not do in real life. Our actors are all living beings. We have encountered some viewers who have physically and verbally offended or even harassed the actors, and we firmly resist and have contingency plans to deal with this. This behavior is not only disrespectful to the actors' personalities, but also disrespectful to other viewers who have spent money to buy tickets and want to experience the plot seriously. Creating a free and open world is to allow everyone to better enjoy the fun brought by the story." Wu Mengda said.

3. actor: We are not NPC, we are small town residents

Sheriff, mayor, rich man, magician, pastor, banker, journalist, shopkeeper, street man... Each game has about 30 characters, dressed in well-designed costumes, which constitute the living beings of the town residents. Every character standing on the side of the street and passing by the audience may touch the rumbling of the wheel of fate of a group of people at the next corner.

Becoming a permanent resident of Providence town, performing the same or different scenes here every day is a special experience for every member of this performance team.

The actor Chen Jindong, who plays Father Molin, comes from Wenzhou and is a former active actor on the stage. He, who came from a professional background, was praised by Wu Mengda as "an artist whose performance is full of explosive power and hierarchy, with both appearance and acting skills."

At the beginning of the team's establishment, the production team went around to find Chen Jindong. He was deeply attracted by the mysterious role of Father Morin in the script, so he gave up his iron rice bowl job at the Wenzhou Drama Performance Art Association and became a "Shanghai drifter". Chen Jindong has played over 200 roles, and his exploration of this character is still ongoing to this day.

"I believe that I am a resident of the small town, not a so-called NPC. Every interaction and exploration with the audience will bring me a new understanding of my character, which is a very enjoyable process," said Chen Jindong.

Actor Tang Anxin, who plays the role of Chinese overseas Chinese leader Wang Yi in the small town, is a representative of non professional actors. The Shanghai girl, who was born and raised in Shanghai, has "innate spirituality and insight as an actress," according to Wu Mengda

Graduated from a flight attendant school in his early years and became a professional flight attendant; Later, he "returned to the ground" and worked as an administrator of an Internet factory. Tang Anxin's life is full of imagination, and her life experience has also added a lot of confidence to her ability to handle the role of a female tycoon in the martial arts world.

The character of Aunt Wang was initially set as a boy. The director asked Tang Anxin, who volunteered to be an actress, what role she wanted to play. When she saw that the character in the character's biography was a Chinatown overseas Chinese leader from Shanghai, she insisted on giving it a try.

"At the beginning, the director was actually worried. Can a small girl make the character persuasive? I thought of many ways: Aunt Wang should be a Shanghai woman with smooth speech and enthusiasm for everyone, but when dealing with situations, she has a gentle and tough side, and even a decisive and decisive side. This is the resilience unique to women. Later on, this character appeared, and everyone saw the performance tension brought by gender and received a lot of praise." Tang Anxin smiled and said.

A performance of three to four times a week is a physical and mental challenge for actors. Among them are musical actors, drama actors, film and television actors, as well as non science actors like Tang Anxin who have a passion but talent. Looking at it from a longer perspective, many of them will eventually become passersby in the small town, but such a special professional experience also makes them intentionally or unintentionally pioneers of this special type of performance.

4. Town: Not Making Money Now, Future Is Prospective

Since the opening of the show, there has been a wave of price increases, and the "train ticket" to the small town of Providen has come to 598 yuan. In the future, the ticket price of this performance may continue to go up-this is not the "hot" price increase of the operation team, or hunger marketing, but it is a helpless move under heavy operating costs.

Setting aside the huge investment in stage design, scenery, various equipment, and expensive venue rent, watching a single performance with around 30 actors facing over 60 spectators is a rare proportion in any immersive performance space today.

As the topic of Providence town becomes increasingly topical, even viewers who have watched dramas multiple times have conducted MBTI analysis for the residents of the town on social media platforms.

The entrance of Providence Town is a beautifully decorated bar, whose main function is not to allow operators to earn some alcohol money during non performance periods to "subsidize their families", but to provide a space for audiences who have experienced different storylines to communicate with each other after watching, creating an open content community ecosystem.

Wu Mengda and Wang Xiaohe mingle with each other all day, sitting down at the same table at any time, participating in discussions, listening to the audience's excited sharing, or mercilessly roast. The opinions of the audience allowed them to grasp the direction of word-of-mouth, and the development of IP derivatives related to the town was put on the agenda accordingly.

Various peripheral products are already being designed, and stage plays set in the town of Providence have also entered the script creation stage. Both the creative and operational teams are well aware that a good experience is the key to attracting traffic and word-of-mouth, and these derivative products with fan co creation attributes and emotional stickiness are the truly promising profit points for Providen in the future.

"You see, I still have over a dozen DLCs in preparation, some that are already being rehearsed, some that have already been written, and some that are in the process of being conceived. This is a race between creators and audiences, but I believe that this game will not easily end one day."

As Wang Xiaohe spoke, he buried his head and stared at the computer screen in front of him. A complex chart of colorful colors illuminated his signature sly and proud smile.